


In Which John is a Dork and Roxy is a Drunk

by aedonprose



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, fluff did i mention fluff, its fluff thats all it is, its just a one shot, jane honey that can't be healthy, meanwhile jane is shipping her bestie and her cousin, roxy is a drunk and john is a dork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 11:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2024148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aedonprose/pseuds/aedonprose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You think it would be nice to live in a fairytale, sometimes. One where there's no drinking, and no guilt. Maybe, in this fairytale, you even have a job - or, better yet, a fucking reason to stop doing what you're doing to your life.</p><p>Course, in a fairytale, there would be a convenient exit from this cycle of shit you call a life that you've got going, and you'd have a reason to live. Then you'd ride off into the fucking sunset and everything would be just fine an' dandy. </p><p>That's not where you live, though, and much as you hate your life you've got neither will nor way to change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which John is a Dork and Roxy is a Drunk

**Author's Note:**

> so this was originally meant to be part of the HSWC's 2nd main round, but due to lots of things never got uploaded. WHATEVER. enjoy the fic anyways.

You were a mess when it started, but then you always were. Stuck, basically, in a vicious cycle of tequila and bars and hazy sleep.  Guilt over unemployment, guilt over leeching off Jane, guilt over the tequila, which naturally led to more tequila. Which meant fucking up, guilt, alcohol. Always. Sometimes it wasn’t tequila, just for variety’s sake, but your life basically sucked. Yeah, once upon a time there was a perfect princess in a fairytale tower, and she sure as hell wasn’t you.

So when you woke up your room was dim, curtains shut, floor covered in empty bottles and crumpled tissues, clothes, chocolate wrappers – you _felt_ dim, stuffy nose, dry throat, stiff and tired legs and arms. Your head was sloshy and uncertain and your skull was too tight.

Then, though, you smelt bacon. You crawled out of your den like a cranky mama bear. Well, if mama bear regularly drank herself into hibernation then wandered blinking into the sun nursing a hangover, solely to remind herself how fucked she was so she could drink more… Where the fuck was your bacon? It was too early for philosophy.

Turned out the bacon wasn’t your flatmate, though, it was her cousin. Finding him in your kitchen you were suddenly a lot more conscious of how you looked, standing in the doorway with puffy eyes and wearing nothing but a ratty tee over pink underwear, your blanket wrapped round your shoulders like a superhero cape.

Hangover Girl… yeah…

You’d like to say it was love at first sight, but you don’t live in a fairytale and you never have. Mostly, there was just a strange(ish) guy in your kitchen cooking enough bacon to feed an army and singing to himself. He was faintly out of tune and it was kind of adorable. When he finally noticed you standing there, though, he trailed off singing and kinda paused flipping bacon. ‘My dad said I had hollow legs,’ he says. ‘And bacon is, like, the sixth food group. Seventh? Whatever.’

‘Where’s Jane?’ you said, still in fuck-it’s-too-early mode, and he laughed (this cute Saturday-morning-cartoon-character laugh that was actually made to melt your heart, you swear to god). He popped the plate on the bench and slid it across to you. ‘Want some?’ he said, in this cheerful voice like he hadn’t actually noticed you were barely dressed and covered in eau de hangover.

There was the moment when a sane Roxy would have run back to her dull bedroom to find clothes and stayed there til the stranger had left… so what did you do, you poked at the coffee machine til it spat out two cups of black bitter shit, you sat down at the bench, and you smiled at him. ‘You’re John, right,’ you stated.

He actually bowed, flourish-with-the-spatula and bend-at-the-waist and all. ‘That’s me, milady! You must be Roxy. Jane’ll be back in, like, fifteen minutes, she hadda go get eggs.’ He pointed the spatula at the plate. ‘You know, for with the bacon.’

‘Oh, nah,’ you replied, marginally more awake after drinking coffee and seeing a cute guy. ‘Nah, I thought you meant to dip in the coffee. Now help me out, we gotta eat all the bacon before Jane gets back.’

He mock-gasped. ‘How dare you tempt me so? I spent so long cooking this bacon. Jane would be devastated if there was none left!’

‘It was totally all for you anyway, you giant liar,’ you say. ‘Come ooon, you know you can’t resist. It’s calling you. Plus, I’ll look fat if I’m the only one eating bacon.’

He almost relented, you could see it in his eyes, and then he stiffened. ‘My code of honour as a chef means I must refuse! Or, it does now! Because I just decided so! Even when swayed by such tempting logic.’

‘It wants you to eat it, John,’ you said in the spookiest voice you could muster while licking grease off your fingers. ‘It waaants you to…’

He held the spatula up, in a fencing opening pose. ‘You’ll never take me alive, you bacon-stealer!’

You threw a piece of bacon at him.

\--

Things felt better than they had in ages, over breakfast and coffee and flirtatious comments that John was totally oblivious to (the adorable idiot). When Jane came back she almost dropped the eggs because you were talking to her cousin in ‘nothing but an ancient pair of panties! _Heavens_ , Roxy!’ John looked at you like he legit hadn’t noticed and you laughed your head off at the blush that appeared when he realised Jane was totally right about the state of your ‘pyjamas’.

When he left, you took a long and scalding shower and found the least crumpled clothes you owned. Jane raised her eyebrows when you even started brushing your hair, but before she could ask questions, you started asking your own.

You discovered from quizzing Jane that John Egbert worked in IT for Skaianet, that he was weirdly obsessed with awful movies starring stoic manprinces the world loved to hate, that he was ‘single, yes, Roxy, good gracious I’m sure, he is my cousin after all!’

‘Oh, shit, yeah, I didn’t even think, he’s your cousin…’ you said, your excited questions rolling to a stop. ‘Janey, say the word and I will back the hell off I’m sorry –‘

‘You are an absolute nincompoop sometimes,’ said Jane, and you readied yourself to swear of the cutest guy you’d ever seen with a sinking feeling in your stomach. Jane grinned. ‘I haven’t seen you this happy in months. Why on earth do you think I invited him over for breakfast? Honestly, I would bet my last dime that he thinks you’re cute, too, Roxy, go for it!’

You squealed and hugged her and everything was right with the world. Maybe you’d get a job this week, or at least try and find your résumé. And also find John’s number. You didn’t connect the dots, not yet, but the world was brighter today. You didn’t feel like drinking, so much.

\--

‘Yeah, so it was basically shit in at least twelve different ways,’ you finished, morosely shredding the last piece of bread into tiny pieces. ‘I was just getting drunk all the time and even Jane was nearly sick of me. But it was, I dunno, it was easier than getting off my butt and fixing my drivelling excuse for a life. Or, I thought it was. Same diff, I guess.’

The park was getting cold and your fingers were starting to get numb. Probably time to head home, but you didn’t want to. You were busy feeding cranky city ducks and spilling your life story to a cute guy, and it was the best first date you’d ever had.

The guy in question frowned. ‘That sounds lonely,’ he said, standing up. ‘And you’re so, uh - ‘

You laughed at him as he crumpled his face up, lost for the right word. ‘Pretty?’ you suggested. ‘Wise? Bammin’ slammin’ bootylicious?’

‘Forceful,’ he decided. You elbowed him. ‘You sure know how to make a girl feel wanted, huh, Egbert.’

‘No, uh, I mean, you _are_ very pretty and all that, but I wasn’t talking about that,’ he said hastily. You nodded. ‘Good save.’

‘Ha. Shut up, Roxy. Anyway I meant… you always know exactly what you want, and how to get it, and you never let anybody stop you… I cannot imagine you just wasting away and doing nothing. You’re, too full of energy, I guess. I’m not making sense.’

Huh. 

You had never seen yourself that way before. ‘I didn’t have anything else I wanted before, though,’ you said slowly. ‘Like, getting drunk all the time sucked, but I was kinda used to sucking. It’s not like I had any motivation to _not_ suck –‘

The two of you realised the double meaning at about the same time. You probably scared off half the ducks with your laughter.

‘Fun as this is, I’m freezing my nose off,’ said John when you both recovered. You promptly unwrapped your pink scarf from around your neck and gave it to him. He blinked at it a little before putting it on, complaining about how totally uncool it was that he was wearing a pink scarf when he had a reputation to uphold!

He walked you home like a gentleman and waved you goodbye. You wanted him to kiss you, but you don’t think he even noticed. God, he was adorable, and even the cold couldn’t stop you grinning stupidly. As you went to bed that night, you realised you hadn’t drunk, like, practically at all, in weeks.

\--

John Egbert hated his job, but loved amateur magic. Not your wizard kind, but the street kind, cards out of sleeves and rabbits out of hats.

He waved his hands as he talked and was known to hit things accidentally when he was excited.

He pushed his glasses all the way up to the top of his head when he was concentrating. They fell off the back, too, sometimes.

He texted like a middle-schooler. Jane laughed and said you two were a perfect match that way.

He did cryptic crosswords and he was god damn awful at them.

He scratched his nose when he was lying.

(He wasn’t nearly so good a prankster as he thought he was.)

He took being pranked-in-return gallantly.

He didn’t care that you used to drink, and he didn’t realise he was the reason you _used_ to drink.

You didn’t need Jane to learn things about him, any more.

You didn’t so much fall in love with John, as realise you fell a long time ago.

\--

You saw his eyes light up as soon as you confessed that you’d never actually seen Con-Air, and the two of you watched it on Jane’s couch.  John didn’t care that it was awful. You made fun of him for knowing the scenes word-by-word.  Honestly, you didn’t mind that it was awful, either. It meant you could watch John, instead of the movie.

People never look at somebody’s whole face. Maybe the first time they meet, when you have to judge every flaw, memorise the way their cheeks curve or how close their eyes are to their nose so they can be recognised next time, but they don’t really _look_ consciously. Maybe artists are better at that, who knew. His nose was kind of big, and his glasses were kind of crooked, and his mouth was just slightly open, smiling at the happy end scene where Nic Cage gets to finally see his wifey. You didn’t really care about Nic Cage and his wifey, because John was right in front of you, John’s face was right there and you could see all of it. You were sober and so much more alive than usual and you could see John’s face and to you, he was perfect.

So it finished, and he looked back at you, still all buzzed from the happy ending...

You always thought when people kissed there was a whole lot of choreography – the two of you were sitting a fair way apart on the couch, and you didn’t magically gravitate together like people do on a movie screen. What if you fell over, you worried, what if you misjudged the distance or you poked yourself in the eye with his glasses? The kisses you’d had before weren’t awkward, just kind of premeditated. You kinda figured, when you were actually kissing somebody it probably came naturally, to arrange yourself around the kiss.

You weren’t quite right, it turned out. It wasn’t so much that the choreography worked itself out, it just didn’t matter anymore. You didn’t forget about the rest of your body, you could feel every nerve ending, but it didn’t matter because you could have been doing a handstand to kiss John and you wouldn’t have cared. You’d never felt your body so acutely, and you’d never felt more comfortable in your own skin.

\--

‘Oh, hey, I forgot to tell you I lost my job,’ he said. The credits were still playing in the background.

‘That sucks,’ you said, honestly sorry. (but still kind of euphoric).

He shrugged, and smiled at you. ‘I kind of hated it anyway, honestly. It is probably a good thing, that it’s over. I mean, I can do something fun now, instead!’

You nodded. ‘Endings, beginnings, they kinda go together.’

‘What was that quote? From the Sound of Music, maybe? My nanna loved it. Where the Lord closes a door –‘

‘Somewhere he opens a window,’ you finished. ‘You know what, I think I should move out of Jane’s apartment. I’ve been squatting for like forever, she’s gotta be sick of me.’

‘I thought you guys shared it?’

‘She always paid the rent,’ you pointed out, and he laughed.

‘Beginnings, endings,’ he said.

‘Some things gotta end, I think.’ you said. ‘Like, there were literal bottles just sitting on the floor of my room. Ew. Some endings are probably good endings.’

The second kiss was better than the first, and it crossed your mind that this particular ending was good, was one of the best endings you’d ever had. Especially because it wasn’t an ending, not really, your story was gonna keep going and John’s would, too. Maybe calling it an ending wasn’t fair – seemed like endings were always the beginnings of other things. Maybe it was just because you were genuinely happy, though, that that night felt like the end of a fairytale. And hey, maybe that made you lucky not to be living in one.


End file.
